World

Here's What NYC Would Look Like on Other Planets

The Manhattan skyline with Lady Liberty standing tall is one of Earth's most iconic images, but what if that scene was constructed on another planet in our solar system?

Artist Nickolay Lamm's stunning photo project, commissioned by StorageFront.com, depicts New York City built on the other planets, from Mercury to Neptune. Its skyscrapers stand — or crumble — at the whim of foreign, violent atmospheres.

"I felt that if I could show people what New York City looked like on other planets, I'd give people a sense of how lucky we are to be living on Earth," he tells Mashable. "Sure, it's cheesy, but life truly is a miracle. Earth is a very special place, and I cringe when people say that global warming is a hoax."

Lamm's inspiration came from NASA's mind-blowing panoramas of Mars. The images the public sees are often color-corrected versions, as scientists adjust the white balance and color to show the extraterrestrial terrain as it would look under Earth's lighting.

To make sure the illustrations were scientifically accurate, Lamm consulted M. Browning Vogel, a former NASA employee who holds a Ph.D. in Astrobiology. Lamm, who's known in the web world for his gadget mocks and imaginative illustrations, spent two-to-three hours on each image, detailing the landscape and bringing the story to life.

With help from Vogel, Lamm describes how each planet's atmospheric condition translates into an image.

Original Image: New York City, Earth

New York City, Mercury

"Mercury has but a thin envelope of gas that barely qualifies as an atmosphere. The inexorable solar wind continually strips the planet of any gases that might be captured or retained by gravity. The tenuous atmosphere consists primarily of hydrogen, making the atmosphere transparent to the darkness of space and the withering radiance of the nearby sun. The solar wind interacts with the planet’s magnetic field to blast columns of dust and charged particles into the atmosphere that then become a comet-like tail, evident as the sparkling haze shown in the upper atmosphere. The landscape is perforated with impact craters and covered in volcanic dust, similar to Earth's moon."

New York City, Venus

"Due to its prolific volcanic activity, Venus is blanketed in an atmosphere of CO2 with clouds of sulfuric acid. This creates a yellowish envelop of hot, sulfurous air that obscures the NYC skyline and the nearby sun. The landscape is devoid of water and covered in craters, lava, sulfurous dust and other features created by Venus' volcanoes."

New York City, Mars

"Mars has an exceedingly thin and cold atmosphere composed primarily of CO2. The atmosphere has an oxidizing chemistry that converts the abundant iron materials on its surface into various forms of rust, evident as the tawny landscape. Strong convective currents in the atmosphere also stir up frequent dust storms that can cover vast expanses of the planet and last for months. The NYC skyline is thus caked in dust and framed in Mars' dusty red atmosphere."

New York City, Jupiter

"Jupiter is the largest of the outer gas giant planets. Its atmosphere is so large and thick that the hydrogen and helium gas components condense into liquid and even metallic form near the base of the atmosphere. At around 100 kilometers (62 miles) above this liquid surface, the air has a similar air pressure to Earth’s atmosphere at the surface, but it has a reducing chemistry that would burnish any metal surface, including that of the Statue of Liberty. The NYC skyline is depicted at this 100-kilometer level, floating in the atmosphere. This area of Jupiter’s sky is a vast body of clear gaseous hydrogen. NYC is nestled between Jupiter's clouds of water, ammonia and sulfurous gases (sallow clouds) that sometimes converge into powerful thunderstorms (seen erupting). Above the skyline hangs a yellow haze of hydrocarbons."

New York City, Saturn

"Saturn has a similar atmosphere to that of Jupiter, containing a mixture of hydrogen and helium that condense at the base of the atmosphere. NYC is shown at about 100 kilometers above this liquid surface, where the clear hydrogen resides at similar pressures to Earth’s atmosphere and contains soft, cream-colored clouds of ammonia ice with occasional thunderstorms (shown below the cloud deck). As with Jupiter, the atmospheric gases are highly reducing and would slowly dissolve any metal oxide surface like the green patina that covers the Statue of Liberty. White clouds of ammonia and light hydrocarbons float by above the skyline."

New York City, Uranus

"Uranus is a cold gas giant that rotates perpendicular to the plane of its orbit. It has very high wind speeds at certain latitudes due to the uneven heating of its surface. These winds are faster than the most powerful hurricane on Earth and would thus obliterate structures like the Statue of Liberty. The atmosphere is primarily composed of hydrogen and helium with occasional clouds of methane and bands of hydrocarbon haze, shown as the horse tail clouds above the skyline. The atmosphere also contains a considerable fraction of methane, giving the air a beautiful aquamarine tint."

New York City, Neptune

"Neptune is the outermost planet of the solar system and thus the darkest. Like the other gas giants, it experiences extreme winds that would destroy buildings and other structures. Neptune's atmosphere consists primarily of hydrogen and helium with traces of ammonia and water giving it an azure tint. Ammonium and water ice condensate hangs as light colored cirro-stratus clouds above the skyline. Neptune’s atmosphere is the coldest place in the solar system."

The Hubble eXtreme Deep Field is the most comprehensive view into the universe ever, combining into one photo more than 2,000 images taken at the same spot over a period of 10 years. It took billions of years for the light from these galaxies to reach us. So in this photo, we are, in essence, looking back in time.

This composite image of Earth and Mars shows the relative sizes of the two planets. The Galileo orbiter acquired the Earth image on Dec. 11, 1990, when the spacecraft was about 1.3 million miles from the planet during the first of two Earth flybys on its way to Jupiter. The Mars Global Surveyor captured the Red Planet image in April 1999.

This spiral disk of stars, dust and gas is 170,000 light-years across, or nearly twice the diameter of our Milky Way galaxy. M101 is estimated to contain at least one trillion stars, 100 billion of which could be similar to our Sun.

In what is quite possibly the most famous images of our beautiful planet, the Blue Marble photo is a true-color image of the entire Earth that was stitched together using a collection of satellite-based observations.

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